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Google Targets TV Advertising
mytrip writes to tell us that Google may have television advertising in the cross-hairs. CEO Eric Schmidt recently stated that viewers shouldn't have to stand for tv commercials that are a "waste of your time" and says Google is planning to deliver "targeted measurable television ads." I just hope I can still skip them with my TiVO in a couple years.
Whenever I'm skipping through ads, I always rewind if I catch a Geico ad, or an Apple ad. These ads are often more entertaining than whatever I'm watching, and I hope that google helps advertisers to create content, rather than the awful propaganda that most ads are today.
Of course, I find myself scared that, while I've never purchased car insurance myself, the first place I will look will be Geico when I turn 25 - not because I have any reason to believe they are actually a better company, but their ads have caused me to think very highly of them on a subjective level. Even knowing this, I cannot undo this manipulation.
If this means I don't have to see any more feminine hygene product ads, go Google, go!
If Google can reverse the trend on some channels to move towards LARGE popups that move around and make noise on the bottom have of the screen DURING the actual show, completely ruining and interrupting it, than GREAT! Go for it!. I really hate trying to read something on the screen like a subtitle or place&time text only to have a big race car drive across it, obscuring my view and making loud tire screeching noises over a quiet/dark/moody intro scene to some show.
Quiet, text-only, to-the-point, factual advertisement is a lot more tolerable.
Morphing Software
viewers shouldn't have to stand for tv commercials that are a "waste of your time"
<vent>
For example, all automobile ads. Huge waste of money and my time. They show the cars out in the wild instead of sitting in traffic like most of us - they highlight features that only car-guys know what the heck it means (er, dodge hemisphere?), and the local dealer ads are headlined by guys/girls that have no shame and sound like idiots. I'm hard pressed to think of any car commercial that even has an entertainment value.
I think what really irritates me is that every 6-10 years when I buy a new car I know that a significant part of the cost is those stupid commercials.
</vent>
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
It's the thing the Sci-Fi channel is on! And you call yourself a slashdotter...
When I watch car shows, I see ads for cars and other car shows. When I watch Law and Order I see ads for Preparation H. When I watch Matlock, I see ads for adult diapers.
Having quite a bit of marketing background, I can assure you that it's completely intentional when an ad isn't like the Geico or Apple ads you mention. The main problem with such ads is that they don't explicitly show the product enough. They work fine for an insurance ad, as insurance really isn't a tangible thing (like a bottle of beer or a particular restaurant are). When it comes to something like insurance, you're trying to get the viewer to remember the name or the logo. It's rare that one can successfully associate something memorable with the name of a firm, as in the case of a gecko with the name "Geico".
Most ads are there to appeal to the ignorant, unwashed masses. And what often works best is to show them your product over and over and over and over and over and over. Like in Gatorade commercials, which are often just a montage of many clips of sweathy athletes drinking Gatorade. The same goes for shampoo. That way the consumer will remember the appearance of the item the next time they're in a store that sells it.
Pah! Any true geek would know that TV ITSELF is a waste of our time :)
Remember that for broadcast TV (in the US at least), you're not the customer, you're the product. Advertisers are the customers. Google can make money off TV advertising the same way they do everywhere else: by making ads more successful and therefore more profitable for advertisers. That lets networks charge more for advertising space and time, and Google takes a cut of that. The profit isn't in owning the pipes, it's in owning the eyeballs.
There's also the synergy angle, i.e. Google can tightly couple TV advertising with Web advertising. "Joe just saw an ad on TV for X and started Googling for information on it five minutes later, so let's show him ads for stores in the area which sell X." Going back to what I said before, with regards to Web advertising, Google pretty much owns all the eyeballs, so this has the potential to be really profitable for them.
Imagine watching Seinfeld and Jerry pulls a Coke from his refrigerator. Only, in some households he might be seen pulling a Pepsi. Developing the technology to dynamically insert products into the programming is the next logical step in advertising. We see it already, statically, with companies paying gobs of money for product insertion. Imagine instead shooting movies and programming with "generic" green-board like products, and then replacing them with images of the desired product, on a case-by-case basis. You already see some of this in baseball games. There is an ad billboard behind home plate in Fenway park. Nominally it is "green", but it gets replaced in the video stream (at the broadcaster end) with ads. It's not a huge step to move this insertion down to the DVR/cable box. This is where companies like TIVO have the inside track. Their boxes could do the insertion, under command from 'central control'. And they already know our viewing habits (not just what we watch, but when we watch it, and for how long), and our "clicking" habits.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.